What I'm Reading: Whole

The title of this book -- Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, with Howard Jacobson, PhD -- leapt out at me on the new book shelves at my local library.

Although this book has some interesting insights, it was not quite the book that I was hoping to read when I plucked it from the shelf. It is a follow-up to The China Study, which the authors refer to many times. This book explains how Dr. Campbell came to believe that nutritional science was headed in the wrong direction, and why, based on his experiences during his long career doing research and serving on various panels.

He spends the largest part of the book explaining why his "wholistic" view is a better avenue to health than the reductionist view that is prevalent in research. He uses the old story about six blind men describing an elephant. Each describe it differently, depending on whether he felt the leg, tusk, trunk, tail, ear, or belly. Similarly, modern nutritional science is focused on individual elements in food, rather than the whole of the orange, apple, or other type of food. Not only are there more components in food than we know, but they work together for good or ill. For example, he discusses work by a colleague focusing on vitamin C in apples, which found that 100 grams of fresh apple had the antioxidant, vitamin C like activity equivalent to 1,500 milligrams of vitamin C, yet only contained 5.7 milligrams of actual vitamin C. Dr. Campbell's demolition of the reductionist approach  to nutrition is very similar to Michael Pollan's criticism of what he called "nutritionism" in In Defense of Food.

Based on his experiences, Dr. Campbell discusses how the reductionist approach affects (for the worse) nutrition, research, medicine, and social policy.

Based on his research, Dr. Campbell has adopted, and advocates, a diet very similar to that advocated by Dr. Fuhrman in Eat to Live.

While there are some interesting studies discussed in this book, I was already familiar with the view that the whole (of an apple or any foodstuff) is greater than the sum of its parts, as well as the "follow the money" aspects of research. So I found this an interesting book, but one that did not plow as much new ground for me as I would have hoped when I picked it up. It did, however, reinforce what I've read in Eat to Live and In Defense of Food.

I've gotten The China Study out of the library, and I look forward to reading that next, as I would like to know more about the study that led Dr. Campbell to advocate what he calls a whole food, plant based way of eating. He prefers this term to either vegan or vegetarian, as he notes that most vegetarians still consume dairy, eggs, too much oil, refined carbohydrates, and processed food, and vegans still consume added fat, refined carbohydrates, salt, and processed food. Of course, the negative effects of refined carbohydrates and processed foods were discussed in detail in Salt, Sugar, Fat.